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OTTAWA — Canada's decision to become the first country to ban baby bottles with bisphenol A was in flux in the days leading up to the unprecedented announcement — and was secured after the intervention of senior Conservative political officials, internal government records show.

The federal government made history in April 2008 when it announced plans to list the hormone-disrupting chemical as a toxic substance and to ban the use of polycarbonate baby bottles.

BPA is used as a building block in polycarbonate plastic.

No other country has since followed Canada's lead, but manufacturers of baby bottles have voluntarily removed BPA from their products after consumers and retailers in other countries stopped buying and selling polycarbonate bottles, even as the chemicals industry maintains the plastic additive is safe.

Tony Clement, health minister at the time, called the toxic designation and the ban a "prudent" move, saying government scientists concluded that BPA exposure to newborns and infants was below levels that may pose a risk, but "the gap between exposure and effect is not large enough."

More than 5,000 pages of Health Canada correspondence and documents covering a two-week period leading up to the announcement released to Canwest News Service under access to information paint a less definitive picture about the decision to ban the additive in baby bottles, showing some unease within Health Canada about this precautionary approach to BPA.

This approach allows policy-makers to make discretionary decisions in situations where there is evidence of potential harm, such as BPA and reproductive disorders and cancer, in the absence of complete scientific proof.

Internal documents show that nine days before the announcement, Clement wasn't planning to announce the ban — and the "new turn for baby bottles" came after a high-level meeting involving officials from the health minister's office and the Prime Minister's Office.

The records also show the decision received a tepid response from Canada's chief public health officer. At one point, political officials in the minister's officer were worried David Butler-Jones might have concerns with the plan to ban it in baby bottles but not in infant-formula tin cans, where bisphenol A is found in the epoxy lining.

Butler-Jones responded that the proposed ban in bottles was "probably reasonable" and that he was fine with not extending the ban to infant tin cans.

Initially, though, Clement was scheduled to simply unveil tips on how to use baby bottles properly to reduce exposure of infants and to commit to "exploring options to restrict the amount of bisphenol A found in baby bottles," according to draft media lines.

After a "gruelling five hour dry run" with officials in Clement's office, the Prime Minister's Office and the Privy Council, the bureaucratic arm of the Prime Minister's Office, the government decided to move forward with a baby bottle ban.

That's "where all these decisions were made," according to an assistant deputy minister of health, who attended the pivotal meeting alongside three other Health Canada civil servants — a communications specialist, the director general of the food directorate and director of chemical safety, pegged as the department's "science spokesman" at the meeting.

Following the meeting with political staffers, the chemical safety director then told Health Canada's chief of chemical health hazard assessment and other top officials in the food directorate's bureau of chemical safety to "note the new turn for baby bottles."

His scientific team had already prepared food-related risk-management options for BPA, suggesting a uniform approach for baby bottles and food containers; in addition to being used to make shatter-resistant polycarbonate bottles, BPA is also used as corrosive-resistant protective coating in food and drink cans, including cans for infant formula.

Under the heading of polycarbonate baby bottles, his team referred to the "need to ensure consistency in recommended risk management approach for pre-packaged foods and consumer products, given comparable exposure estimates from both sources."

The Health Canada official had also written to a colleague in Health Canada's veterinary drugs directorate that the final decision on any risk-management steps is not up to scientists. "Our role is to recommend to the minister what science dictates to us, the rest (i.e. Decision) is up to him!"

And once the final decision was made to move forward to restrict the ban to polycarbonate baby bottles, the health minister's office wanted to make sure Butler-Jones, the head of the Canadian Public Health Agency, was on board, given there would be no announcement to ban BPA in infant formula cans.

The minister's senior policy adviser, who also served for the current Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, asked senior agency officials, "we would like to know whether he is prepared to state unequivocally that the benefits of feeding formula to babies outweigh the risks of exposure to BPA contained in cans of formula. Otherwise, we have a significant comms and policy challenge."

In response, Butler-Jones told the minister's office that a ban on baby bottles made with BPA is "probably reasonable as there are alternatives (glass and those with flexible liners)."

He added, "I don't think we need to ban it in formula cans, though working with industry to phase it out is important."

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